Rock Star? Pop Star? Alien?

How David Bowie and Barbarella created Glam Rock

Welcome back to the history of rock! Ready for a banger?

The world wouldn’t be the same without David Bowie.

He was one of those larger-than-life, impossible-to-define souls. One who somehow repeatedly defied expectations but maintained an undeniable attraction, building huge, loyal fanbases, and alter-egos that felt at once honest and otherworldly. A true tastemaker!

When Bowie first came into the spotlight, the space race was raging, with Russia and the United States battling for the Final Frontier. In the midst of the conflict, Bowie fashioned himself an alien, sent to Earth to be a cultural icon.

Check out this early performance and try to hear the psychedelic influence of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit on the snare drum, mixed with the lilt of British invasion rock as Bowie strums on his 12-string guitar. Do you hear the Buddy Holly influence in his vocals? They both sing in a most-a pe-culiar way.

While it was “Space Oddity” that first caught the world’s attention, it wasn’t until “Starman” (and the birth of alterego Ziggy Stardust) that Bowie truly became a sensation. The shimmering costumes and makeup shocked a conservative Britain, still reeling from the rapid transformation of The Beatles. It was beyond the hippies now.

This was the age of the rock star becoming the pop star — breaking norms and paving the way for future punks and glam rockers.

It’s the Space Age! I love the aesthetics of this time. (Flying saucer lamps are underrated.) And so is Barbarella, a 1968 Sci-Fi movie starring Jane Fonda.

Here’s Rolling Stone describing the first night Bowie changed his stage aesthetic:

At around 9:00 p.m., the houselights were extinguished. A spotlight sliced the darkness. Bowie took the stage. But was it really him? In a strictly physical sense, it must have been. But this was Bowie as no one had seen him before. His hair – which appeared blond and flowing on the cover of Hunky Dory, released just three months earlier – was now chopped at severe angles and dyed bright orange, the color of a B-movie laser beam. His face was lavishly slathered with cosmetics. He wore a jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, revealing his delicate, bone-pale chest, and his knee-high wrestling boots were fire-engine red. Bowie had never been conservative in dress, but even for him, this was a quantum leap into the unknown.

Then he began to play. His band – dubbed the Spiders from Mars and comprising guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Woody Woodmansey – was lean, efficient, and powerful, clad in gleaming, metallic outfits that mimicked spacesuits, reminiscent of the costumes from the campy 1968 sci-fi romp Barbarella. The Jane Fonda vehicle had been a huge hit in England, and it became a cult film in the United States

So it’s this fusion… rock history meets sci-fi futurism. Sexual and serious but campy and over-the-top. It was glam, bb.

Luckily, to take it from here, I had a great conversation with Jay Jay French, one of the original glam rockers and the founder of Twisted Sister. He joined my podcast to discuss Bowie’s influence, the New York Dolls (a band that embraced Bowie’s gender fluidity and costumery throughout the local NYC music scene), and the tough road Twisted Sister faced make it as an unconventional act:

Isn’t it fascinating how many shows Twisted Sister played? To have that kind of exposure to a local audience is so foreign to the modern musician. It must be quite a conversation, with the crowd pushing and pulling you to become the artist they want to see. Is that liberating? Or does it lead you to dark places you didn’t intend? Maybe both?

Under Pressure: Queen

I can’t talk about Bowie without Freddie Mercury and Queen. Freddie Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, was of Parsi descent. The band hit the scene hard. It’s crazy how fast they progressed from forming as their full lineup in 1971 to releasing Bohemian Rhapsody just four years later.

Their music and stage presence was maximalist in every sense. Big hair, big harmonies, big guitar solos, big vocal runs — a wall of sound. And like Bowie, Freddie was more than comfortable pushing gender norms, embracing theatricality, and pulling from unlikely sources like Broadway and baroque pop. It’s how he managed to compete with the size of the instruments around him. It’s like all of rock became an arms race. And Freddie had the chops to be the best.

Check this video if you don’t believe me. As one of the commenters put it, “this [video] isn’t a performance. It’s a historical event.”

The Chaotic, Brilliant Birth of “Under Pressure”

The story of Under Pressure begins in the snowy Swiss Alps, with a metric ton of cocaine. (There’s a reason why studio budgets were so high in those days…)

Queen were chilling at Mountain Studios in Montreux, tracking their tenth album Hot Space, when David Bowie just dropped by. He serendipitously was in the same building, working on a soundtrack.

Queen drummer Roger Taylor said they were just messing around, playing covers, and killing time. Then Bowie said what everyone else was probably thinking: “This is stupid. Why don’t we just write one?” Bowie would lay down some background vocals, for a song dubbed Cool Cat. But then they abandoned that and jammed, spiraling into one of the most iconic pop songs of the century.

Jon Deacon's hypnotic bassline became the backbone. And Freddie and Bowie battled it out in the vocal booth, improvising melodies blindly, refusing to hear what the other had recorded, stitching together vocals. The juxtaposition of Freddie’s scatting and Bowie’s apolocolyptic delivery just worked in the weirdest possible way.

Brian May later called it “a war of egos.” Bowie kept working to rearrange the parts. At one point he told John Deacon how to play the bassline, and Deacon basically went, “Uh, no. I’m the bass player.”

Under Pressure wasn’t a calculated hit. It was lightning on a Swiss mountain top. The kind of kinetic energy only found in chance meetings and intense collaboration.

Hear the cool, collected, self-assured David Bowie, set against the bombast of Queen? It’s jarring. It’s humbling. It’s our last dance.

Distillation into Hair Metal

As with all creative explosions, they tend to find a center of gravity, coalescing into new sub-genres and sensations. Combining the theatricality of Queen, Bowie, and Zeppelin, with the hard rocking of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, but softening up the edges and teasing out the hair, hair metal came to be.

I really loved this music in junior high. My first proper live concert was Mötley Crüe. It was wild.

But in many ways, hair metal is kinda like a snake eating its own tail. So decadent, so debaucherous, so poppy, that it’s almost a parody of itself. You could call it late-stage rock.

Some acts to check out would be Mötley Crüe, Def Leopard, Bon Jovi, and Poison. Any rock history would be incomplete without Aerosmith and Guns ‘N’ Roses, but I’d say they’re less hair metal, and more of a blues-rock/hard-rock answer to hair metal.

But when the fake documentary, This Is Spinal Tap, came out… hair metal lost a bit of its volume:

If you’re into hair metal, definitely read Fargo Rock City, and watch This Is Spinal Tap. Consider it “homework.”

Thanks for reading internet friends,

Scoob

P.S. If you’re so inclined, keep up with all the things Love Music More by subscribing to this Substack’s companion podcast. The Why You Should Listen to Albums episode gets into how letting the full thrust of an artistic concept unfold is a uniquely all-encompassing and exciting extravaganza. There’s certainly worse ways to spend the better part of an hour, and one never knows what new influences they might encounter after entering a bedazzling sonic wardrobe.